As Coyote watched the people light their torches one by one from the Fire Circle, a figure approached from the darkness. As she drew closer and closer to the flame, she was gradually more illuminated. When she was near enough, Coyote recognized her as White Buffalo Woman.
He greeted her with a smile as members of his Tribe danced around the fire.
As they sat side-by-side, watching his Tribe dance, a thought occurred to him.
“Grandmother Buffalo Woman,” he began, “at the beginning of my journey you told me that each person must find his own fire, yet all of the People are lighting their torches from the fire I brought them. How can this be?”
White Buffalo Woman smiled at him and said, “Yes, it is true that they lighting their torches from the fire you brought to them, but each person will use it in their own way. Eventually each will learn to make his or her own fire. Some, like you, are meant to be the Seekers who will find fire of their own. Others, like those lighting their torches, are meant to be Followers…at least until their own time comes to seek. Their time to seek may come in this life, or in the next. Who can know? That is for them to decide. Everyone’s own journey is ultimately up to them. What I do know is that you have opened the path for others to follow. The lesson of the journey is that we are all born of the same fire. And since we are all One, and we all come from the same Source, in a way they have all found their own fire through you.”
“I know the path you have trod has been a long and difficult one,” she continued, “but it was your path, and not theirs, to walk. Besides, if I had not told you to seek your own fire, you would have never set out on the journey in the first place, and you would not have become the strong and powerful Trickster that I now see before me. You brought back something far more powerful than the fire. You brought back the wisdom of who you truly are.”
Coyote though long and hard about this before replying. He thought about all he had learned on the journey. He recognized that although he was still a Trickster at heart, he could never go back to the way things were before. The quest had changed him, giving him the confidence to live according to his own true nature as a Trickster and a teacher. All of this happened because White Buffalo Woman had deceived him into finding his own fire.
After a time, he grinned at her and said, “So you played a trick on me?”
White Buffalo Woman laughed and said, “Yes, I did. What do you think?”
Coyote, the Master Trickster, laughed with her as he said, “It was a very good trick. A very good trick indeed.”
Conquering Death
“The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’ He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the ‘other thing’), as destroying the permanent with its change. ‘Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.’ Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.”
–Joseph Campbell
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
–Carl Jung
“The true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.”
– – Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
What is the freedom to live? Can we ever truly be free to live until we come to grips with the fact that we are going to die? Once you’ve conquered your fear of death, what else can stand in your way? If the soul is the only thing in the Universe that is truly indestructible, then death is just another way of being. Even if you are atheist or agnostic, and have no belief in an afterlife, this is still true from the point of view of your own consciousness. If this life is all you will ever know, and there is no afterlife, then it is impossible to ever be conscious of your own death; therefore there is no way you could ever know that you have died. How can you be conscious of your own death, if death is the end to consciousness? So from the perspective of your own consciousness, you are immortal for all practical purposes. If there is no afterlife, then you die, your Universe ceases to exist, and you are no longer the Center.
With this knowledge of death comes the Freedom to Live. Soul musician Ray Charles said, “Live every day like it’s going to be your last, because one of these days you’ll be right.”
Freedom to Live means that you have mastered death. If you have gone to the land of the dead and returned, what more is there to fear?
If you are not already outdoors while you’re reading this, you may wish to step outside. If your sacred space is convenient nearby, step into it before you finish this book. Once you are in your sacred space, look around you. Take in all the wonderful things that nature has provided for you while you think about the fact that the only things necessary for survival are food, clothing, shelter, healing and love. Just for a moment, make a quick mental inventory of all of your possessions. How many of them would it be impossible, truly impossible, for you to live without? How many are unwanted or unnecessary items? How much of your life is spent working to make money to buy unwanted, unnecessary, and sometimes expensive items that, once purchased, sit in the corner and gather dust?
As you think about these questions, also think about the things that truly give your life meaning. How many of those things have to do with material possessions? How many of those things have to do with yourself? With those you care about? With the natural world?
In my hometown, there’s an old cemetery in a forest. The graves go back to pre-Civil War times. Whenever I’m in town, I like to visit that cemetery just to enjoy the silence and the beauty of the surrounding forest. Once as I was walking through this cemetery and reading the ancient tombstones, it struck me that the messages were all about how much this or that person was loved and how much they would be missed. I didn’t see any tombstones that said, “Here lies Joe Smith. He had a two-story, five-bedroom house and a Mercedes-Benz.” Most of the tombstones I read talked about how much the departed was loved and how much he or she will be missed.
Imagine that you are lying on your deathbed, looking back on your life. What would you like to have written on your own tombstone? What sort of legacy would you like to leave behind for your loved ones? If you knew that you were near to drawing your last breath, what would you regret leaving left undone?
The answers you have to these questions will tell you who you truly are. When you know who you are, you know how to be in the world. That’s where the true Freedom to Live lies. That’s what is important in life. That is the kind of legacy I’d like to leave.
